March 26, 2009

Make an attempt...

That was weird.. a cool weird.

Anyway, let me tell you what hapenned about 3 days ago..
I went to Barnes and Noble with my youngest sibling, Ester..
She wanted to use my laptop and I wanted to read some books... so off we went.
She could not find an outlet to plug the laptop for the computer until she found one. I dont know why they dont have more outlets.. geez, making people look crazy trying to find one.

Well, I left her and went on my way to get a couple of books that I wanted to read from.
-I got a book on Personal Finances "Youre broke because you want to."
-Another one on Picking Stocks by Jim Cramer "Mad Money"
-Another one on marriage, "His needs, her needs." (Excellent book by the way)
-And the last one was "Vintage Church" by Mark Driscoll.
(Man, I give you my whole life on this blog)

I skimmed through a couple of chapters of each book.
-Loved the finances one...
-stocks are interesting in this downturn market..
-Reread favorite parts of His needs, her needs...
-and dug deep into Vintage Church.

Anyway, this took about 3 hours and close to closing time I decide to look for my sister.
Come to find out, the only plug that was availble in the whole bookstore was in the Sex and Relationships department..

I hear a guy's voice.
Apparently there is a man talking to my sister about the bible.. of all places...
This guy looked decent and was conversating with Tey about God.
At this point, my sis was done with the laptop and doing her devotional with her bible..
I looked at her and turned to the Kama Sutra books on the shelves.. That was weird.

I turned to the man and introduce myself..
He said his name was Robert. Robert was (or is) in his mid 50s and had a church background in The Church of Christ.. He was baptized as a kid but does not attend church. He told me that he wanted to go back to his roots and get back to church..

For about 30 minutes, I heard him ask things like,
"When you say you are saved, what are you saved from?"
"How can a person that says he is Christian still sin?"
"Does baptism save you?"
"Tongues? Huh?"

I was astounded as I shared the gospel, man.
That is a feeling that you live for.
I did not have to get on a pulpit.. wasnt even wearing a white shirt and tie.

I went through the process of santification.. We will never be perfect until we see him just as He is.
I told him that we were saved from Hell.. Do you like that answer?
Well, we are also saved from our own selves. From our sin of pride, of hipocrisy, of self righteousness.

At times, I would see his eyes squint while we talked and then I would see his eyes get big, as he nodded, as if to say, "I understand."
He was a huge man.. almost topping 6 and a half feet.
A lady stopped by and told us that she had overheard our conversation and liked that every answer was backed by a text of scripture..

We said goodbye, exchanged emails and told him one last time that I hoped he would encounter the cross of Jesus and repented of his sin.

I am glad.
It is a joy that the personal finance book, the stocks book, the marriage book cannot bring. Not even a book about Church can bring that hapinness.

Pray for me and rejoice wiith me, my friends..
I leave you with this quote from Charles Spurgeon:

"Even if the souls we seek should all persist in unbelief, if they all despise and reject and ridicule us, yet still it will be a divine work to have at least made the attempt"
Wow..
Make an attempt.